The 9th new job I've had in Boston

3/22/02
The other jobs were, for those who were counting: the book store, the Medical Library (I kept this one while working all the others), The New England Conservatory of Music Archive, Boston Architectural Center Slide Library, Tall Girl, The Library of the USS Constitution, Dunkin Donuts and the Allston Library. So there.

Friday, my last day at Countway in the Rare books and Special Collections archive, Jack gave me flowers and a box of Godiva as a going away present. That was pretty cool. I let other girls hold the flowers so long as they gave Miss America platform speeches, which was really fun too. The chocolates were the kind that will just about kill you; I took three days to eat them and forced a couple on Aral, because I had to make someone else taste how good they were. The chocolates came in a copper colored box I can’t make myself throw way because it still smells so good, but I have no idea of what I’ll keep in there. Maybe it’ll just be the repository of delicious chocolate smells.

I started my new job Monday at the Library of International Studies. It is, in the tradition of jobs that Elizabeth gets hired for, pretty darn odd.

The Library of International Studies is moving out of the building its been in for more than 35 years, because that building will be torn down this summer and a new one will go up. My job – temporary until the end of May – is to help pack up materials that are going to be sent off to the university’s depository. Right now I’m working with newspapers from Russia, boxing them up in a proper preservation way, as acid free as we can make them, and then changing the catalog records in the system. I really like the work; it’s the right combination of physical (moving, lifting, preserving) and intellectual (cataloging, sorting, coding) that I find soothing. I don’t have to sit down or stand up for too long. I have to think, but not so hard that it hurts my head. My official supervisor is someone I rarely see, but other co-workers that are over me seem pleasant enough and willing to teach me things.

I have all ready learned to recognize the words Gazette and Star in Cyrillic. I have learned so much in three days, and that makes me happy. I was worried, leaving the rare books department, that the next job wouldn’t be as full of new words and surprises. It’s true I’m not as interested in the subject of International Studies as I am in medical stuff. But then, it’s not like either of those things are my life’s passion anyway. I’ll learn as much as I can in ten weeks, and then it’ll be time for something different. The big thing I’m getting here is the basic cataloging skills I needed, and a good experience working on a project with a hard deadline. It’s exciting. I’ve given up on the dream of a job that never changes, and just realized that I’m meant to have all sorts of occupations in my life that will be ever shifting. It’s Okay. I’m just happy at this point that I’ve lived in this apartment here in Allston longer than I ever have anywhere since I was 17. Yea me! How exciting! My phone number will not change again for at least 5 months.

I went to the official benefits meeting they have for new staff at the Faculty Club. The club is a very nice building near the main campus, but it was one of those places that makes me twitchy, because it’s way too nice. Things that make me twitchy are rugs that are worth more than everything I own all added up together. Don't get me wrong, I loved the meeting; I got paid to sit for four hours and listen to power point presentations. Plus, now I have health care and dental insurance and long term disability and a bunch other stuff I could just cry over it makes me so darn happy. But. There was a continental breakfast with special fancy croissants and marmalade and other stuff and a sterling silver hot water carafe next to a tea chest with all sorts of tea in it. It was all extra fancy. I need to get over being uncomfortable around obvious extra-fancy wealth. I'm still twitchy near it.

And, surprise and shock, I saw someone there that I knew. Way back when I first moved to Boston, I worked at the Brentano’s in Copley Plaza. I met a girl named Jessica there and we hung out a bit; but then circumstances and jobs changed for the both of us and we lost contact. And here she was, at the same benefits meeting, because she had been hired over at some other clerical part of Harvard. So hopefully she’s going to make it over to my place Sunday, and we’re going to hang out again. How odd and random. Still, it’s good to see her again.

I’m off to work now, to learn something new and unexpected again. It's nice, to have the unexpected as my routine.